His and Her Circumstances
by Lavanya Six
Summary: AU. Two years ago, it's believed the Fire Lord exiled Prince Zuko to distance himself from responsibility for his son's subsequent assassination. Five months from now, a boy in an iceberg will awaken. Tonight, Mai runs across a masked criminal. BluMai.
1. Her

_Special thanks to _clockworkchaos_ for beta reading this fic!_

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_**His and Her Circumstances**_

Part 1 of 3: Hers

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_(Five months before the end of Avatar Aang's hibernation.)_

_(A different world...)_

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Colonial summers are cool and dry compared to the Home Islands' equatorial climate. Such mild weather is said to instill rampant softness among the colonial class and, alongside a reputation for miscegenation, be partly to blame for the dearth of indigenous firebenders among the second, third, and fourth generation colonists. At least that's what Mai's instructors told her at the Academy, but she finds she dislikes the colonies for other reasons.

The lack of common firebenders means hot water is a rarity, so everybody stinks. 'Dirty as an earthbender' isn't a pejorative in the colonies, it's a common descriptor. Their food is bland because people are too poor to import decent spices. The water has her laid up in bed for the first week with a low-grade fever. Worst of all, the fire flakes taste _nutty._

Conditions only worsen the further inland her father drags her. The peasants are at least authentic in their dullness, but the local governors pride themselves on being paper-thin imitations of the Home Islands' nobility. They paint their mansions in fake gold trim, cut their clothes in fashions two years out of date, and tutor their heirs with cast-off Academy instructors.

The men and women overseeing the Fire Nation's economic interests are miniature tyrants, lording over their colonial subjects with nonsense rules. Some ban fashions reminiscent of the Earth Kingdom's, others amend the state-approved curriculums to aggrandize their own reputations through miniature personality cults. It's like no one bothered telling them that Sozin abolished the daimyos and their petty power blocs back during the late Roku Era.

Mai puts her mask of cool indifference to much use in the course of her father's fact-finding mission, hiding her disdain for the would-be daimyos. Whatever advice they have for her father about how to best administer Omashu is likely worthless, but no one asked for opinion. The endless parade of tasteless welcoming dinners, pauper mansions, and interchangeable settlement towns quickly exhausts her minimal interest. Yet it's better than being back at home, listening to her awestruck mother harp on the greatness of each dribble of drool rolling down Tom-Tom's chin. At least here she can be bored without sweating through her clothes.

And bored she is, until one evening in Panlong Colony...

******

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Panlong Colony is a clutch of closely nestled stone buildings surrounded by high wooden walls. Like most 'new' settlements, it is still very obviously a captured Earth Kingdom town with red paint slapped over green roofing tiles. The streets, laid down by a people who could casually reshape the landscape, bend and curve and split in disorderly fashion. It's a pattern that's a standard defensive design in the borderlands, where the earthbenders have altered their towns and villages to be confusing to attackers who breach the city walls.

Mai only cares that it helps her wander aimlessly. If she exhausts herself enough, she'll be able to sleep tonight. Her day was taken up by a political lunch that kept going until it rolled through dinner, and she'd had nothing to do but sit still and say as little as possible.

Only there is nothing to do to work off that pent up energy because Panlong Colony _sucks_. Red lanterns hang overhead, strung up in preparation for the Fire Days festival, but it's just another half-hearted attempt at imitating life back in the homeland. Dragonfire-flies and buttermoths buzz around the lanterns, and Mai supposes that if she were a bug then a little fire would be exciting too. Better to dive in and end it all than live on here.

It's while contemplating the bugs - Because what else is there to do in this hole? - that Mai spots a black shape moving across the skyline.

Most people, upon catching a stranger skulking on a rooftop in the night would, after calming their racing heart, inform the city guard.

Mai smiles.

Following the mysterious man from street-level would only end the game prematurely, either when he slips out of sight or when the locals figure out why Mai is staring so intently at the rooftops. So when she gives chase, Mai ducks into an alleyway and then starts climbing. She won't be running away to join Ty Lee at the circus, but her best friend has taught her a few acrobatic tricks over the years.

She, Ty Lee, and Azula used to go skylining in the capital's harbor district. It was a game of skill and daring. They would work together to steal lunch from the best local restaurants, and then throw a picnic on the roof of the Coal Board. It was the best spot to watch ships dock. Those rooftops had been old, the tiles loose, and, in several spots, rotten rafters had all but snapped under their feet. The roofs in Panlong Colony are no challenge in comparison. The wood under Mai's feet is sure and the tiles firmly affixed.

Warm, red lantern light fills the early nighttime, making it easy for Mai to track her target. As she closes the distance between them, her instincts tell her that this figure is a man, even if she can't see his face beneath the blue mask. The gait is all wrong for a woman.

When he hops down onto a lower-lying rooftop, Mai decides now is the time to announce her presence. Standing tall at the edge of the house behind him, she levels her wrist launcher and shoots a stiletto. The slender dart buries itself in the roof tile adjacent to his outstretched hand.

The reaction is explosive. He spins around, whipping out his twin dao. Mai tests him with a lazily thrown knife. The masked man easily bats it out of the air.

"Finally," she says, the knot in her shoulders loosening. "If the colonies had more masked men like you, maybe it wouldn't be such a desolate landscape of utter dreariness."

"...Mai?"

She raises her brow at the whisper, the unexpected familiarity in the stranger's tone throwing her off-balance. Her mistake buys time for the masked man to throw a smoke bomb. Mai reflexively fires several stilettos into the billowing cloud, but there's no cry of pain.

When the air clears, he's gone.

******

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Oh!" bursts Qiang, the governor's portly son, cutting her off mid-sentence. "You're talking about the Blue Spirit!"

It was evening. While her father discussed the upcoming revisions to the unified colonial penal code with the governor, Mai was stuck playing pai-sho with Qiang. His broad, ruddy face was unreservedly animated by whatever emotion he felt, and Mai couldn't help but think it was a blessing that he had never attended the Academy. They would have eaten him alive. One quality he has in his favor was a preference for pai-sho to polite conversation. The long resulting silence won him approval from Mai, even if the intensity with which he enthralled himself with their game was almost manic.

By their third round, Mai had stopped playing with any actual strategy and was instead randomly shuffling pieces around the board. She was ahead in points for the first time that night. Her unoccupied mind kept wandering back to her encounter the night before. Leaving out the details of their meeting, she asked Qiang about a man in a blue mask. She didn't get ten words out of her mouth before her jumped down her throat.

"And who exactly," she asks, "is the Blue Spirit?"

A finger wags in her face. "Not who. _What_. Some say he's a vengeful spirit, striking out against those who oppress the peasantry. Others state that the mask is a mantle of vengeance, passed from ghost to ghost, so that the unquiet dead of the Earth Kingdom can find peace by settling their scores against us."

"So he's some criminal with a stupid mask."

"Eh. Pretty much. But I like the wilder stories better." Qiang belts out a laugh. The tiles on the game board jump. "He's a living colonial legend, and a quite capable criminal. I'm surprised that you Home Islanders have never heard of him. From the bounty on his head, you'd think he'd been the one who killed Prince Zuko or something."

Mai hums noncommittally, pretending to study the board. In her lap, under the tabletop's cover, black fingernails dig into her palm. "Your move."

"Hm? Oh! Yes, yes." Qiang leans over the board, hawkishly staring down his nose at the tiles. After a few seconds he glances up, sneaking her a smile. "Thank you for agreeing to play me. I haven't had a game this good since General Iroh visited us in the spring."

The boy is expecting her to seem interested or at least offer him a lead-in with "Oh, the Dragon of the West stayed here?" Instead Mai bores a hole in the board with her eyes, inwardly rehashing old regrets. Qiang catches the hint, wilts, and returns to their game without another word.

Mai loses the round, then retires to her guest bedroom to dream about a dead boy with a shy smile.

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**...**

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She wakes in the middle of the night, hand already drawing the sai hidden underneath her pillow. Her bedroom is a foreign country in the darkness. The only light is from the crack between the hallway door and the floor. There's a passing shadow in that thin light that shouldn't be there.

Someone is standing outside her bedroom.

Mai slips out of bed, checks that her sleeping robe preserves her modesty, and then pads towards the door. She has few weapons on hand. Her wrist launchers are laid out on the dresser, but she'd make too much noise equipping them; likewise with her knife belts. The retractable sai and the few blades tucked into her robe will have to suffice.

Mindful of creaking floorboards, Mai tiptoes towards the door. A lifetime of decorum lessons has left her movements fluid and silent.

The shadow vanishes.

Mai does not rush forwards and throw the door open. Instead she opens it slowly, giving her eyes a moment to adjust to the hallway's oil lanterns. No one speaks to her, or tries to bust down the door to hurt her. When she's ready, Mai steps out.

The dim hallway is devoid of people. Suspicions undeterred, she heads left, the direction the shadow moved. The mansion is settling in the night, and each creak and grown almost seems a menacing monster from childhood. She should be all alone. The servants have bedded down, and Mai knows the governor bars his personal guard from the third floor. No one respectable would have tried to visit her at this hour.

Rounding a corner, Mai spots a light flickering underneath the door to the governor's study. Qiang's father _could_ still be up this late. Surely colonial governors worked through the night on the pressing issues of crop rotation, census taking, and tax collection.

But Mai doesn't think so.

She sets her hand on the brass handle and carefully opens the door. The well-oiled hinges preserve her stealth.

Inside the study, the Blue Spirit stands with his back to her, busying himself with the contents of a bookcase. He is searching for something. Mai doesn't know what, nor does she care. Rather she stands there silently for several moments, savoring the feeling of getting the drop on this 'legendary' thief twice in as many nights.

"Didn't anyone ever tell you," she says, and he freezes mid-motion, "that you'll go blind reading by lamplight?" The shift in his muscles would be imperceptible to the untrained eye, but Mai knows the look of someone readying themselves for a fight. "Don't. You're almost interesting, and I'd rather not go back to envying the dead just yet."

The Blue Spirit raises his hand. He turns. Mai hazards a few seconds to study his mask. Its color is boring, but the thief's eyes are less so. Even in the dim candlelight, they gleam like gold. Fire Nation eyes. And...

...something else.

"Who are you?" she demands. "How did you know my name?"

The Blue Spirit averts his gaze.

"If you're not going to say something, I might as well use _this_." She means the sai, knowing he had seen it. "And don't think I won't. Now spill."

"You grew out your hair," he finally says. "It looks nice."

Cold.

Every part of her goes cold.

The sai in her hand trembles. It does so because she's gone wobbly since _no no no it can't be he's dead and I won't ever see him again._ The Blue Spirit takes off his mask, and at the end of a lopsided glare is Zuko.

"Mai?" her father calls from the hall. "What are you doing up?"

Zuko scrambles underneath the governor's desk. Mai stares. She doesn't turn around until a warm hand touches her shoulder. Her father is standing in the doorway, his free hand cupping bent flame. By the calm look in his eyes he obviously didn't see a dead prince floating around.

"Mai, it's nearly... are - are you _crying_?"

She touches her cheek. The fingertips come away glistening. "I guess?"

Her father's face is soft with age, with wrinkles that ran deep. Now those heavy lines stretch wide into shock. He dismisses the fire in his palm and gently takes hold of her by both shoulders. "Mai, look at me. What's wrong? You can tell me."

For once, her schooled demeanor betrays her. Father has caught her in a rare vulnerable moment. Her heart flutters. Telling her father the truth is an option that can be dismissed out of hand, because her parents are not the sharing kind. Not unless your name was Tom-Tom.

Ty Lee taught her to climb and jump. Azula taught her important skills, too. So Mai tells her father the truth from an indirect angle. "Before, Qiang was talking. He played pai-sho with General Iroh in the spring..."

Father sighs. Reaching out, he rests his open hand on top of her head like he did when she was a small child. It's been years since he last did it, but Mai lets the gesture pass without objection. She could use some steadying right now. "I know it's hard, but you can't let hopeless wishes affect you, even when they belong to the Dragon of the West. _He's gone_."

Yes. Gone underneath the governor's desk.

"You're right." She makes a maudlin show of wiping her cheeks on her robe's sleeve. Slipping around past her father, she moves for the door. Her father follows in tow, praise be to Sozin's ashes. "I'm being stupid. Wandering around won't help me. I guess I'll just have to find whatever answers I'll get in my bedroom. _Tonight_."

Her father claps her on the back even as he closes the study's door. "That's the spirit, dear. A good night's rest always gives us the answers we need in life."

"Yeah," she says. "I'm sure the airbenders were all napping on the meaning of life when we wiped them out."

"Quite possibly. Savages do strange things."

Once Father drops her off at her bedroom door, she goes inside and waits for a dead boy to come to her.

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**...**

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Zuko isn't long.

He steals into her bedroom with a grace she never associated with him. The idea of him learning poise with age makes her feel less like a stranger. Mai is grateful for her bedroom's darkness. It cloaks the gulf between them; six months of exile and two years where he was presumed dead.

They speak in whispers.

"Mai?"

"Here."

"Where's your lantern?"

"On the nightstand beside the bed. Left-hand side."

There are two rough scratches, and then a _snap-sizzle_ as a matchstick flares to life. The yellowish light washes over them both: Zuko in his body-hugging black outfit, expression a fiendish white-cheeked smile carved from wood; her, lewd in an open sleeping robe, the last traces of modesty preserved only by her underwear, chest bindings, stiletto wrist launchers, and many belts of newly donned knives.

The match eventually burns down to his fingers. Zuko gasps in shock. The light goes out. He fumbles in the dark, and after several seconds a second match is struck. The pleased smile adorning her face gives way to puzzlement.

"Why do you need matches?"

Zuko sets the tiny flame to the oil lantern. Only then does he remove the Blue Spirit mask. His eyes are dark now, clouded over. The easy confidence is gone. This is the awkward thirteen year-old boy Mai remembers, shy one eye and with scruffier hair. "You, uh, look good."

"I do," she says. "I also need easy access to my weapons and I didn't want to risk a pervert walking in if I started dressing."

"You... don't trust me?"

Anger surges in her belly. If her parents hadn't already wasted years rigorously testing her for signs of firebending talent, Mai is certain she would have burned him to ashes then and there. "You've been missing for _two years_. Everyone thinks the Fire Lord had you assassinated - except for your uncle, who's a sad punch line at parties because he's been hunting around the world for you. But it turns out General Iroh is no joke because you're still alive. But where do I find you? Dressed like a thief because apparently, for some reason, you _are_ a thief!"

Zuko blinks. "That's the longest thing I've ever heard you say."

Mai launches a stiletto at his head. He sidesteps it, letting the wall take the blow, but a few of his black hairs flutter down to the floor.

"Don't joke," she rasps, finding it hard to breathe. It takes a few seconds for her to collect herself, but Mai long ago became her own master. When she next speaks, it is in cool, passionless tones. "I thought you were dead. I _mourned_ you. Ty Lee and I held a funeral for you because no one else would. You don't have the right to joke with me. Understand?"

Zuko has the decency to look ashamed. "Mai..."

She blinks stinging eyes, pushing back unshed tears.

His jaw tightens. "You might not like it."

"I don't especially like you right now." She closes her sleeping robe and ties it at the waist. "Whatever you say can only improve my opinion of you, Zuko."

He bows his head. "That's fair."

Mai sits at the edge of her bed. After a moment, Zuko plants himself a few inches away. It's a respectful distance, even if their overall situation is hardly proper. She's barely dressed and is entertaining a boy, a _criminal_, in her bedroom. They don't have the veneer of a betrothal as a flimsy excuse. They aren't even dating.

It's like something out of one of Ty Lee's trashy novels. Although if that's the case and she's in some freakish world where Zuko is supposed to be the hero, he'll get a knife between his ribs if he tries ripping off her chest bindings and ravishing her. If Mai is ever involved in anything as stupid as that, she'll be the one doing the ravishing.

Not wanting to sit on it, Zuko holds his mask in his hands. The Blue Spirit stares up at them both. The lantern's weak light casts long, flickering shadows across its cruel brow and crazed, toothy grin. Up close, Mai sees that the mask is weather-beaten. The paint is cracked in places, and there are off-color spot fixes dabbed here and there.

This is no mantle of celestial vengeance. It's just an old theater mask, albeit one Zuko cradles like her mother does Tom-Tom.

The late, unlamented Crown Prince of the Fire Nation audibly swallows. "I guess it started like this..."

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**- End Part 1 of 3**


	2. His

_**His and Her Circumstances**_

Part 2 of 3: His

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In ancient times, before the Fire Nation had unified politically under the Fire Sages and their supreme Lord, those exiled by kings could seek refuge on neighboring islands and begin their lives again. However, to signify the cutting of ties to their former homeland, exiles would only be accepted if they came empty-handed. That tradition continued, and those banished from the modern Fire Nation were expected to do the same.

While his judgment is clouded by fresh pain, Zuko sneaks three things with him out of the royal palace.

The first is an ink painting of his mother, which he keeps bundled up and hidden in his quarters aboard ship. The idea of showing his scarred face even to the memory of his mother shames him.

The second is an old gift from Uncle, which he keeps tucked in his belt. It's a good knife, but the message inscribed on its steel is worth a hundred solid gold knives to Zuko.

The third is a small piece of lava rock.

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...

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The Western Air Temple is like nothing Prince Zuko imagined. There's the bizarre architecture, obviously, but it's the barrenness inside its halls that lingers foremost in his thoughts. No books. No scrolls. _No bodies. _There are only musty beds and the occasional piece of charred furniture. Besides crumbling statues and damaged murals, nothing that could be truly called 'Air Nomad' remains.

Uncle reminds him that Sozin organized a methodical purge of the airbenders, so that an unrealized Water or Earth Avatar would have no resources with which to train themselves in the lost bending art. Whatever scraps the Fire Nation had overlooked, grave robbers scavenged decades ago. Intact airbender memorabilia supposedly went for high prices in certain circles.

It is a bitter first step in a seemingly impossible journey. Uncle doesn't want to let him wander the temple alone, but Zuko yells and rages until he has his way. The Fire Lord commanded _him_ to find the Avatar. He was on a mission. His face feeling like a white-hot brand was pressing into it is no excuse to be 'taking it slow'. If he could endure the recollection of a drugged twilight where his uncle had sawed off strips of dead flesh from his cheek, searching an old temple for hidden clues was nothing.

He is wandering through a large hall, one with charred walls and knocked over chairs, when suddenly the sheer eeriness of it all cuts through the haze of pain fogging his head. It's as if his bandaged eye can see into another world. He imagines a foreigner visiting the royal palace a hundred years hence, after it has been gutted and abandoned by his people's enemies, trying to find a trace of someone named 'Prince Zuko' with only a name to go by.

How could that stranger know what happened to Zuko if all records had been destroyed a century beforehand? And if the records were gone, how would that stranger track Zuko? By trying to understand his mind? How would that even work? How could that stranger appreciate the garden's overgrown apple trees, or turtle-duck pond, or the hallway corner where he first held Mai's hand?

That stranger's task would be...

Zuko squeezes his good eye shut, forcing back that final thought. _No_, he tells himself. _It's not impossible. I _will_ find the Avatar!_

He says so later that day. "If I have to, I will spend every day of the rest of my life hunting the Avatar. I know it's my destiny to capture him.

Uncle Iroh smiles warmly. "You know, Prince Zuko, destiny is a funny thing. You never know how things are going to work out. But if you keep an open mind and an open heart, I promise you will find your own destiny someday."

Later that day, Uncle chides him for hurrying down the mountain trail. "Some of us old fogeys need a breather!"

Zuko doesn't stop until he reaches the dock. Even there, he can't bring himself to look back.

* * *

...

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They stop in the colonies to resupply, but Zuko never goes to shore once in the three days they're docked. The buildings, the people... it all looks too much like the homeland. He also knows what everyone will think when they see his newly un-bandaged face, because it's the same thing he thinks: _weakling, shameful._

Only young children burn themselves with firebending.

Only the pathetic stake their honor at an Agni Kai and lose.

During the long cruise along the Earth Kingdom's northern coast, Uncle organizes a music night. Along with all the other instruments he purchased during their colonial layover, he presents Zuko with his own personal tsungi horn.

"I remember how beautifully you once played," Uncle says. "It will be good to practice in the fresh sea air, watching the sun set against a spectacular horizon."

"I need to practice my firebending, _not_ my tsugi horn."

"Prince Zuko-"

"What do you expect me to do with a tsugi horn? Hit the Avatar over the head with it?"

He never participates in music night.

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...

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The Northern Air Temple is the next stop on his planned circuit of the world. The west was a bust, but Zuko knows there _has_ to be a clue about the Avatar at another of the four temples. One of them was the Avatar's home. Even with his people dead, the Avatar would still return to his home at some point, if only to visit.

It's only natural to want to go back home.

They are intercepted in port by civilians from the War Ministry of all places. "By order of Minister Qin, the Northern Air Temple is off-limits to unauthorized personnel."

Zuko pushes past his Uncle. "I have to get up there! Don't you know who I am?"

Zhang Ai is the name of the lead official. Zuko remembers this fact because he will never forget anything about the steel-haired old man. Not his face, his sneer, or the contempt in his eyes as his gaze lingers over the left side of Zuko's face. Nothing will ever silent the echo in his mind of Zhang Ai's words.

"Everyone knows who _you_ are."

* * *

...

* * *

In the end, Uncle pulls some strings. Zuko doesn't know what precisely his uncle did, only that one evening he goes down to the shipyard's whore houses for "a little pai-sho" and comes back the next morning with the written permission of the prefecture's governor authorizing them to go up to the Northern Air Temple.

Any lingering questions he has for his uncle disappear the moment they come within sight of the temple. Zuko can hardly believe his eyes, but his uncle tells him that, yes, he sees the people flying too. This time Uncle utters no pleas for him to slow his spirited pace.

For the first time since his banishment, Zuko has proof his hopes are real.

* * *

...

* * *

The wildly bearded tinkerer grins as Zuko hefts the burned airbender glider. It's missing one wing, and the other is bent at a strange angle compared to the war gliders he's seen in historical illustrations. Zuko wonders if the last person to fly it crashed.

The tinkerer remarks, "Fascination contraptions, aren't they? Considering the wingspan is too small to provide lift for a child's weight, let alone an adult's, I theorize that airbenders must have had hollow bones to fly as records describe. Imagine that! Bird people!"

"Or," Uncle says from the other side of the workbench, "they used airbending to aid their flight."

"Possibly," the Mechanist concedes, "but who can say for certain? No one's seen an airbender in almost a hundred years."

His hands start to tremble. To steady himself, Zuko grips the glider's central shaft harder, but his only reward is the ancient, burnt wood splintering. The thing breaks apart in his hands like a dry cracker. Zuko wordlessly drops the remains on the laboratory floor.

The Mechanists glances between him and Uncle. "Er, don't worry, dear boy! Plenty more gliders where that came from." A pregnant pause. "Well, not really. But I've learned all I can from them already."

"To make your own gliders," he says flatly. "To fly without bending."

"Exactly, my good lad."

"Why?" he grunts. "Why are you living in the Avatar's home?"

The Mechanist strokes his mustache thoughtfully, or tries to. His left hand is heavily bandaged. Stretched over the three stumps where fingers should be is white fabric stained brown. When Zuko had asked, the tinkerer excused his injury with excited babbling over a 'cut-safe knife sharpener', but the explanation is transparently feeble. It burns Zuko, thinking how Minster Qin's men must have tortured this scatterbrained fool for his inventions. How could the Fire Nation's honor withstand such cruelties? War was one thing, but this...

Zuko can't bring himself to ask how the Mechanist's young son - a boy Zuko's own age - lost the use of his legs. He hates himself for another display of weakness, even one known only inside his own mind, but the day has brought too many horrors already. He'll sleep better not knowing the exact price for the Fire Nation's latest tank schematic.

"My people needed a place to start over," the Mechanist finally replies, "and there was no one living here anymore. I figured it wouldn't hurt anyone if there were no airbenders left to hurt."

Zuko's eyes fall. The soot of charred wood stains his palms. He claps them clean and tries not to breathe in the ashes of long ago.

* * *

...

* * *

On the way back to port, Zuko walks beside his uncle.

"Nephew?"

"Yes, Uncle?"

"With the return of your good health, I believe it is time to resume your firebending lessons."

"...Thank you, Uncle."

* * *

...

* * *

The ship is the only thing waiting for him back in port. By law and custom, citizens of the Fire Nation are forbidden from contacting the banished. Yet he is a member of the royal family, even in exile. He never expected Azula to write him, or to even pass along letters from... one of her friends, but his father is Fire Lord. By now, Father had to realize his bandages had been removed, except he has sent no inquiry about his health.

When Zuko left home, the healers couldn't say yet if he had been blinded in one eye or not.

Uncle cautions him against hoping for word from his father. Zuko immediately knows his uncle is right. He's a prince, but one banished in disgrace. What right does he have demanding anything of the Fire Lord when he hasn't yet brought the Avatar home in chains?

He has no right at all.

Until he has his honor back, he is nothing and no one.

* * *

...

* * *

Uncle says, "Again."

Zuko tosses the sweaty towel away. Opposite him, an equally bare-chested Lt. Jee spits on the deck. The blistering noontime sun shines down on them both, and they're surrounded by an ocean that stretches from horizon to horizon. Yet as they start circling one another, Zuko's world contracts. It's only him and his enemy, now.

The lieutenant is an ostrich-mustang, serving as a non-commissioned officer for decades until the Siege of Ba Sing Se, when his record caught the eye of a royal general who prodded him to take the officer's exam. Uncle assures Zuko that Lt. Jee is a good man; stubborn but dutiful. Zuko finds him arrogant, disrespectful, and unmindful of his peasant birth.

But, he must concede, the lieutenant is an outstanding firebender and currently Zuko's superior in the art. It is a bitter truth, but not the first Zuko has swallowed in the past three months.

Still, Jee is an ass, and the day Zuko finally beats him will count as the sweetest one in his life until he captures the Avatar.

(_Because the Avatar _is_ still alive_, he tells himself.)

Zuko attacks first, kicking forward to unleash an arc of red flame. He can barely feel its heat. Jee powers right through the sweeping fire, dispelling it with a searing corona punch, and charges at him. The distance between them closes, but Zuko is faster. The agility of youth carries him forward, into and under Jee's attack.

"Remember your breath, Prince Zuko! Firebending power does not come from the muscles!"

Zuko doesn't spare a moment to yell at his uncle to shut up about things he already knows, thanks much. He can't. There's no time. Jee is back on him. The world contracts again: his scarlet flames against Jee's brilliant yellows and oranges.

He has better than thirty years on the lieutenant. He's healthy, raised on a balanced diet with the best foods from furthest corners of the empire, and kept fit since he could crawl. He does his breathing meditations every morning and night. He's pushed his conditioning harder and longer than he imagined possible back home, all to prepare his body to battle the Avatar. As far as killing machines go, he's now in better condition than most men alive.

But he can't beat Jee.

The match is decided early on. Zuko can feel the offensive slip away no matter what he tries, like blood seeping around a hand pressed down atop a grievous wound. Soon he's moving to Jee's lead; reacting to _his_ flames, _his _will. Jee is acting under orders from Uncle, so the sparring session drags on. The other man slows down, casually signaling each punch and kick before he actually moves. Zuko can only imagine what Jee is thinking, how pitiful a prince he must look.

The real hell of it is that Zuko knows he could beat Jee. He knows exactly what he has to do, what openings to exploit, but he can't. His fire isn't hot enough. He can't hit hard enough.

No matter how hard he tries, it's an impossible task.

Zuko's anger, mounting through six humiliating losses before this one, blooms into genuine rage. He curses everyone. Himself for losing. Jee for beating him. His firebending for failing him. Uncle for shouting encouragement when he's doing miserably. The crew for how they'll gossip like old women about his shortcomings. The Avatar for vanishing so completely. His father for-

_Wait, what?_

Jee slugs him across the face as, distracted, he fails to dodge. The ship's deck rushes up at Zuko.

* * *

...

* * *

There is no more sparring after that day. Uncle sets him to work on breathing exercises, explaining away the lack of heat in his newly scarlet flames as a result of neglecting the basics. Only by building himself back up from the foundations, he's told, will he be ready to resume his training.

Zuko berates his uncle for coddling him, and the anger gives the impression of his inner fire returning. He can yell and shout, and his uncle takes it, because even if Uncle doesn't appreciate what's at stake for Zuko on this quest, he understands that firebending is powered by rage.

But no matter how hot he stokes the fires inside himself, nothing restores the oomph to his bending. When the ship anchors off Ye Niu Bay, his voice is hoarse and all he can hope to menace the Avatar with are cool, harmless flames.

* * *

...

* * *

The Eastern Air Temple, unlike its western and northern counterparts, is nestled in the interior of an uninhabited island. There are no roads, only animal trails. To reach the temple, visitors must spend days hiking across an untamed, mountainous countryside. It takes him and Uncle over a week of hard traveling before they are in sight of their destination.

When he had first charted his tour of the four temples, Zuko had held the highest hopes for this place. It was the most remote of the four, hidden at the far side of the Earth Kingdom. Until fifteen years back, when the Fire Navy had finally broken the last remnants of Ba Sing Se's fleet, it would have been extremely risky for fortune-seeking firebenders to mount an expedition in search of Air Nomad artifacts. So surely the Eastern Air Temple will hold a clue to the Avatar's location.

But it's just another empty graveyard, and the only surprise is that Zuko finds he isn't that disappointed.

As he wanders over the arched bridges connecting the various temple buildings, a thin mountain wind whistles over him, drying the cold sweat beading his brow. Looking up at an empty sky, it occurs to Zuko that to be disappointed requires you to be let down, and to be let down you have to have high hopes first.

A bald, dark-skinned man with a snowy beard strolls past him. "Nice weather."

"Little chilly," Zuko says automatically, still entranced by the overcast sky.

"Looks like rain later."

"I hope not."

"Have a pleasant day."

"You too."

Several seconds pass.

"H-HEY! COME BACK HERE!"

* * *

...

* * *

Uncle inhales the steam rising off his tea. "Your reverence, this is such an exquisite jasmine!"

The guru smiles. "Thank you, my friend."

"Mmm! Don't you agree, Prince Zuko?"

"Yeah. Sure. Tea." He wipes his forehead dry. "It's great."

Zuko looks around the crumbling terrace he's sharing with two old men. Verdant gardens infest the nearby area. While the rest of the crumbling Eastern Air Temple is overgrown from a century of neglect, here there is a semblance of cultivation to the fruit trees. It is not the rigid landscaping of the palace's gardens, but from the work of one man only so much could be expected. Pathik lives on what he grows here. Zuko even spots a small vegetable plot near a shattered fountain.

He asks the guru, "Why are you living here?"

The ancient man pulls his legs into a full lotus position. "Many years ago, I had a vision of helping the Avatar. I came here to the Eastern Air Temple to wait for him."

Zuko is normally inclined to be dubious about spirits, visions, and the superstitious. Despite what his uncle insists, Zuko learned long ago from his tutors that only the primitives of the world still venerate such things. Civilization requires no higher powers. There are rational explanations for everything, like the Avatar just being a freakishly powerful bender. And even if such thing do exist, they are powerless in the modern world. The spirits certainly didn't lift a finger for the airbenders.

Yet when a penniless hermit on a mountaintop says he had a dream about the Avatar, Zuko finds a part of him is eager to hear what this man has to say. _And how pathetic is that?_

Using princely tones drilled into him years ago, Zuko says, "Tell me about your vision, your reverence."

"There's not much to it." Pathik blows stream off the top of his drink, then sips from his chipped cup. "Several months after Sozin's Comet passed, I was meditating at the Southern Air Temple when the image of a dear friend appeared to me. He was an airbender whose name would mean nothing to you, but when his body was alive we were as spiritual brothers. I trusted him when he showed me that I would play a pivotal role in deciding the ultimate destiny of the world. I saw myself in this place," he gestured airily to the surrounding grounds, "so I came here and have waited for the Avatar to join me."

"Y-you've been waiting... for the Avatar... for ninety-seven years?"

"Yes."

Zuko's breath goes cold at Pathik's utter sincerity. "You're insane."

The guru chuckles. "No more than you are to start seeking the Avatar after ninety-seven years, young man."

Because of his firebending problem, he carried his dao with him to the temple, knowing steel would be more reliable than his bending against the Avatar. Now, as he shoots to the feet, the weight of those weapons is like a chain around his neck. His knees wobble. His stomach churns as acid washes with his tea. "I'M NOT... no, I... I don't... feel..."

His vision blurs. Uncle catches him as he topples forwar

* * *

...

* * *

_And here Zuko stops his story. He rubs his gloved palms on his thighs. When he looks aside at Mai, her expression is emotionless but her grey-yellow eyes gleam with curiosity. She's colder than he remembers. Harder. Yet she saved him in the study when her father walked in, so some part of her still trusts him. It's been a long time since he felt that from anyone who knew the real him. "This next part is a little... weird."_

_"So you finally stop angsting?" _

_He snorts._

* * *

...

* * *

Zuko has his fire back.

It suffuses his pores, burning up every inch of him. He breathes like a dragon, lungs crackling with heat, and soon the pink skin of his throat is cooked black.

He opens his eyes. Uncle is there, ladling cool water down his throat. The madman guru is there too, dabbing his forehead with something damp. When Prince Zuko feebly tries to swat him away, to stop him from washing his skin with his poison, Uncle gently grasps his wrists.

He closes his eyes. He is Fire Lord Zuko, sitting upon a throne that rules over a world of darkness. There are no other people here. They were too weak to go on living, to deserve to exist in Zuko's world. He wonders why this is so. The world is better without pity and compassion, yes, but wouldn't it be better still with people in it, even if they were weak? He turns to the dragons on either side of him for their wisdom, but they are stone and cannot speak. _Of course_, Fire Lord Zuko thinks. _All the dragons are dead._

He opens his eyes. He is Prince Zuko and he is afraid. Uncle whispers sweet nothings. The guru babbles nonsense about buttermoths and cocoons when Zuko can clearly feel the dragon's wings flexing underneath his shoulder blades, aching to burst out from the skin trapping them.

He closes his eyes. Fire Lord Zuko reaches for his headpiece. He plucks it from his topknot and then considers the five-pronged solid gold heirloom. If the world has no other people in it, what need is there to wear such a thing? Who is there left to recognize the meaning inherent in it?

The hairpiece tumbles from his hand. It clatters down the steps of his raised dais. He is Fire Lord no more.

Nothing changes.

Zuko opens his eyes.

* * *

...

* * *

_"I've always wanted to try drugs," Mai says. "Good to know they're not boring."_

_"Uncle said it was a spiritual metamorphosis brought on by inner conflict." _

_"Are you sure that mountain hobo didn't spike your tea?"_

_"Even if he did, it doesn't change what I realized."_

* * *

...

* * *

They sail north from Ye Niu Bay, heading around Ba Sing Se and back to the colonies. It would be faster to go south, but Zuko is in no rush to deal with the pirates of the Bai Maopi Sea, not when he has no intention of going to the Southern Air Temple. He already knows what he'll find there. It'll be the same thing as what he'll find if he searches the remotest corners of the world as he once planned - nothing.

The Avatar is long dead. Everyone knows that, including his father.

When he spoke out-of-turn at that war meeting in defense of the recruits of the 41st Division, he had branded himself as a weakling in the eyes of the Fire Lord. For that crime, his father scarred and banished him, only to then insult him with an impossible challenge.

Father doesn't expect him to ever find the Avatar.

Father plans for him to never come home.

Father hates him.

Zuko hates his father back, but part of him still loves his father too.

Uncle senses the change in his attitude, how the anger driving him has drained away. He whispers to him, during the night shift when most of the crew are asleep, that not all firebending is driven by anger and destruction; passion can be a virtue too. Uncle leaves scrolls about the Sun Warriors on his meditation table but Zuko doesn't read them. He can barely light a candle, but that doesn't bother him. Nothing much does anymore. And why should it? He's free.

It's a new day. He doesn't have to chase after the Avatar's ghost. He can do whatever he wants. He's just Zuko now. Not Crown Prince Zuko. Never Fire Lord Zuko. He'll never become that man, a man like his father; alone because he knows nothing of mercy. Instead he can become whoever he wants to be.

He just needs to figure out who that is first.

* * *

...

* * *

They arrive in the colonies on the eve of Sozin's Festival. Dockworkers unload fireworks. The mouthwatering scent of Fire Nation cuisine fills the air. Banners around the city trumpet this, the 97th Anniversary of the Fire Nation's total victory over the Air Nation Army.

The night of the festival, when glowing rivers of red and orange street lanterns light up the colony, his crew goes ashore to join the celebrations. Uncle prods him to leave his cabin, but Zuko begs him off, telling him that he has no interest in being roped into the pai-sho tournament being held in town. Only when he is finally alone aboard ship does Zuko rise from his bed and begin to pack.

To signify that all ties with their former homeland were cut, exiles would only be accepted in their new kingdom if they came empty-handed. To begin life again, an exile had to come into their new home as if a newborn.

But Zuko is exiling himself, and he has no idea where he'll make his new life. So this time, as he leaves the ship that became his home, he's going prepared.

Most everything he has in his cabin came out of his uncle's pocket, and Zuko takes as little of those things with him as possible. This journey is _his_ new beginning. The gold-trimmed armor he leaves, because that's what a prince would wear and he can't be that anymore, but the twin dao he takes for practical reasons. Without his firebending, he needs a way to defend himself. Aside from a few changes of casual clothes he never wore and some money, he takes nothing else.

The ink drawing of his mother he reluctantly leaves behind. He must find his own destiny, and to do that he must abandon his family. With his father and sister, it is easy, but his mother is a treasured memory and his uncle loves him. Still, it must be done.

The knife of a long-surrendered Earth Kingdom general he tucks into his belt. It's a good knife - it severs his topknot with ease - and the words inscribed on its steel are more important than ever. Even with the whole world against him now, he will never give up without a fight.

The last thing he takes is a small piece of lava rock.

Shaped like a heart, it was a childhood gift from a girl who rarely smiled. He should leave it behind, because he'll never see his old home again, but he cannot bear to. It, like the knife, was a gift given in earnestness. Zuko has so little love left in his life, so he tucks it into his breast pocket.

Satchel thrown over one shoulder, he times his departure for when the fireworks are blooming overhead. With all eyes turned to the sky, no one on the docks notices a scarred boy walking down some rust bucket's gangplank and heading into the city proper.

He runs into one snag early on. The revelers in the streets are costumed in colorful masks, and a boy with a distinctive facial scar will stand out. Zuko makes a beeline for the first mask dealer he spots. What remains of his picked-over inventory is unsold for a reason but, before Zuko forces himself to choose from the least bad option, a mask he missed at first glance now catches his eye.

High brow. Lots of teeth and fangs. Mouth frozen mid-laugh.

Zuko reaches for the Blue Spirit mask and...

.

.

.

**- End Part 2 of 3**


	3. Their

_**His and Her Circumstances**_

Part 3 of 3: Theirs

* * *

.

"...and people are a lot more willing to shelter a strange traveler if he'll help them out with the problems they can't solve. My father's men ride hard on a lot of families to supply the war effort..."

Mai only half-listens as Zuko fills in the gap of his two missing years; a second lifetime he lived under a verity of aliases, but all strung together by the thread of the Blue Spirit. It's a fairly monotonous story, like something out of a children's storybook. The prince wrongly cast out among his people, living a life of crime to support himself and strike back at the powers-that-be.

It's heartening in a stupid way. Despite breaking under the weight of realizing his father's true character, Zuko has gone on being the same dork she remembers from their childhood. Lots of boys give their crush wildflowers, some even go so far as to give freshly picked lava-roses, but few are willing to deal with the bloody fingers from thorn pricks. The fact Zuko never, in all the years they circled around each other, bothered to consider clipping the thorns before he picked her those lava-roses was, in its own stupid way, beyond endearing. Kind of like watching Ty Lee twist herself into such a tangle that she needed a helping hand fixing herself.

He could have found a remote colonial village to start a new life in, or disappeared into the vastness of the Earth Kingdom where no one looks down on burn scars. Instead he put on a mask and started committing crime. She almost laughs, watching him talk animatedly about the problems of daily life for the peasantry like some bedtime champion, but his voice is so earnest that anything but calm acceptance would be insulting.

Few people would have even taken up the challenge of the hopeless quest his father had burdened him with in the first place. She's glad he hasn't changed, not really, even after the hardship he went through during the Agni Kai and his subsequent banishment.

She wonders if General Iroh knew about the roses his nephew had given her once upon a time. Probably not. If he had, he might have spent the last two years hunting for the Blue Spirit and not an angry young prince. She would have realized the same if she'd known he wasn't really...

"Zuko."

He breaks off his story and looks to her. Naked anticipation shines in his golden eyes, and Mai doesn't need to guess once, let alone twice, that he's waiting for her judgment. Whatever lax discipline of his features he once possessed has atrophied away under the ease of a rigid wood mask. Mai knows that if she tried to emote so baldly as he now does, she would strain a muscle. "Y-yes?"

After dealing with unschooled peasants for so long, the natural image she projects of cool disinterest in all things must be terrifying to him. When she speaks to him, it is with no inflection in her tone. Let him interpret her meaning as he will, and that interpretation will tell her as much, if not more, than his answer. "Why didn't you tell your uncle you were leaving? He's been searching for you since you disappeared. You should have let him know you were alive, even after the fact."

Question. Hard truth. Rapprochement. The three together should set him off like a windmill sparkler, spraying fire everywhere. Yet they don't.

"I know." He draws in a deep breath, then exhales. "That's why I left him a letter alongside my severed topknot."

Her eyes narrow fractionally. "You left him a letter."

"Yeah. It was the easiest w-"

"You left him _a letter_."

He pauses, finally realizing that he's been chewing on the foot stuck in his mouth. "...Was I not supposed to?"

"Zuko," she says, and has to make a real effort for it not to come out like a growl, "what exactly did you tell him in that letter?"

* * *

...

* * *

_Uncle,_

_I'm sorry you have to find out this way, but we no longer have anything to gain by traveling together. I need to find my own way._

* * *

...

* * *

"Ow!" Zuko rubs the spot where he was just slapped upside the head. "What was that for?"

"You are such a jerk." Mai's lips are infinitesimally pursed, and there's only a vague tightness around the skin of her brow, but her eyes _smolder_. Zuko has battled firebenders, earthbenders, soldiers, mercenaries, pirates, bandits, and irate farmers, but none of them have stirred up as much a sense of danger in him as the young woman staring him down.

He shifts on the bed, suddenly thankful that even if his outfit is formfitting, the black hides a sudden lack of virtue.

"Your uncle watched out for you," she goes on, "nursed you when you were sick. And that's how you repay him? A two line letter? At least tell me you're written him since then!"

Zuko was never good at politicking back at court, but he recognizes a question that shouldn't be answered directly when it barks in his face. "I needed to find myself!"

"And I'm sure that helps him sleep at night, wondering if you're dead in ditch somewhere, or being tortured by the Earth Kingdom." She turns away from him, milky skin and unfocused eyes making her understated discord sharp in profile. "You don't do stuff like that to the people you care about, Zuko."

He reaches for her hand, not fearful of touching her for the first time since their reunion. "Mai..."

She slips from his grasp and stands off the bed. He wonders if she's cognizant of how, in the candlelight, the curve of her hip shows through the thin silk of her sleeping robe. "Don't flatter yourself. I wasn't talking about me."

In two and a half years, he's almost grown use to the dark coal stewing in his stomach where his firebending chi once churned. Now the blackened lump inside him turns to ice. He's been burned in so many ways, but this... this is the worst. And it's all his own damn fault.

He stands, keeping his back to Mai. Calloused fingers slip into the pocket on his outfit's left breast, pulling out the item there kept warm by his skin. He sets it down with a _click_ beside the lantern on Mai's nightstand. After taking a few seconds to collect himself, he puts his Blue Spirit mask back on.

Halfway to her door he pauses, considering. How he chooses to end this things this time... it shouldn't be cruel.

"Thank you for the funeral." He glances over his shoulder, futility studying her unreadable expression for some hint. "It's good to know somebody cared."

* * *

...

* * *

Mai is draped across her bed, watching the sun come up. Her guest bedroom opens to the east, another old Fire Nation tradition borrowed by the colonies. As the mythical First Fire rises, her slim, black-tipped fingers run over and over and over the heart-shaped lava rock Zuko left her.

The sky gradually shifts through a range of hues, starting from the unrelenting blackness of night until it ends with the dreary steel-tinged blue sky of the colonies. That final color is so different from the vibrant sapphire of the Fire Nation's daytime, but she thinks it appropriate for the sleepy colonies. Before she'd had her rooftop jaunt, Mai felt like she could have sleepwalked through the rest of her father's fact-finding mission.

Now...

She is seventeen years old, born late to parents who never expected to have one child, let alone a second fifteen years later. Her best friend ran off to the circus. Her almost-boyfriend was dead until last night. Only it turns out that he ran away too, just like Ty Lee, except he's a criminal and admitted to treasons acts.

Mai drifts off to sleep, missing boredom a little.

* * *

...

* * *

Panlong Colony is too newly established to be known for anything trite like a breed of rat-pigeon or a weapons shop, but their white tea might one day do it. There's a shop inside the fortress town run by an ex-army officer. He sells a new variety of white tea with a curious aftertaste of pine-cherry nuts. Mai has already purchased some in bulk for her mother, because souvenirs from every town visited were 'requested'.

A painting of the Dragon of the West garbed in full general's dress, hanging over the entranceway, gives Mai a hint to the owner's heritage as a tea master. Perhaps because she's operating on only four hours of troubled sleep, Mai doesn't remember the painting's existence until she's sitting at her table, savoring the heat radiating out the teacup and into her hands.

As she stares up into the confident grin of the almost-Fire Lord, smiling from a time when his son was alive and the royal family not hopelessly broken, a lump catches in Mai's throat.

Somehow, her life always revolves back to Zuko's family. If it's not that her father and Fire Lord Ozai were friends back at the Academy, it's that she was born and raised to be Azula's loyal sycophant, one who would never talk back. Even throwing knives at her bedroom walls in an act of apathetic rebellion only merited a new position as the Crown Princess's assassin-to-be.

Even Zuko had never been hers alone. Everything always came back to how what she did concerned her father's career or her own future position in court. Back in another lifetime, when her relationship with Zuko had shifted from Azula's brother to Mai's boy-who-is-a-friend, her mother had whispered hungrily of how Mai would make a proper Fire Lady. When he'd been exiled, her mother had sighed and told Mai that life as a lady-in-waiting was eminently respectable, especially with the prospect of the first female Fire Lord in six generations. "Men may win the empire," her mother would say, "but it will be women who rule the world."

Never mind Zuko or his future. He was gone and supposedly dead. It fell to her and Ty Lee to remember him, and then they'd had to wait until Azula left the capital to visit a reclusive firebending tutor lest the princess catch wind of the little ceremony in Ty Lee's family garden.

Sipping her white tea, Mai tries to forget the bitter taste that General Iroh's portrait inspired. There is no use being upset about reality, she tells herself, or a lack of escape from it. Ty Lee might fool herself into thinking Azula will never track her down to that wandering colonial circus, but Mai knows better. The only place people like them can ever be free is inside their own heads. Getting angry about that truth, or trying to fight it, is a waste of energy.

"Excuse me, miss, do you mind if I join you?"

Mai's baggy eyes dart up from her now-lukewarm teacup. She finds Zuko, dressed in a plain red tunic and matching pants, glaring at her with a completely flesh-toned face. Only the small smile gracing his lips and the lack of heat in his eyes prevents him from coming across as furiously angry.

"Are you wearing make-up?"

"...Maybe."

"Sit." Curtly gesturing to the free seat, she sips her tea. "We can trade fashion tips. Do some girl-talk."

Zuko grimaces but does as commanded. She wonders if sitting with his back to his uncle's portrait is happenstance. Probably not. The other free seat at their table would put it partially in his line-of-sight, but offer him a vital lookout on the teashop's front door. Facing him head-on does reveal an interesting detail: a livid bruise running up his jaw. That wasn't there last night.

They stare at each other across the small table.

"So," she starts, "you do this a lot?"

He nods. "If you ask witnesses to describe the guy who wasn't supposed to be there, they'll fixate on the first thing they remember. Getting rid of my scar is the first step, but I need something to replace it. Bruises, bandages, an eye-catching hair ordainment, a beard or m- is that a smile?"

"No," she lies, despite the faint upwards curl to her lips. "I can't you imagine you with a beard."

Which is another lie. She'd imagined in the quiet hours what he'd look like if he had lived on, and the unexpected opportunity to compare her guesses against reality is most pleasing. Her imagination has nothing on the reality of his broadened shoulders. Zuko at sixteen is taller and more muscular than at thirteen, the promise of adulthood apparent in his half-matured body. Except for being a notorious criminal and unofficially dead, he even acts the same. Full of swagger and self-confidence until someone punctures his ego and brings him back to Earth.

He huffs, "I'll have you know I grow a _great_ beard."

"What, you want a medal? It's hair on your chin." And then her shoulders loosen, the air running out of her. Quietly, she asks, "Zuko, what are we doing?"

He stares back at her, then slowly raises an index finger and points to his teacup.

Mai is not impressed. "I thought you sweated out all your stupidity during that fever dream."

Zuko hunches forwards. His focused glare melts into a lopsided one. An unpainted eye softens; it regrets. "I..."

* * *

...

* * *

"I..."

...was completely _stupid_. What had he been thinking? That he could talk with Mai and it'd be like old times? Ducking Azula to steal chaste kisses in the shadow of apple trees, drawing up his courage to hold Mai's hand and smell her hair?

"We're not kids anymore," she says, voice so cold that he knows it hurts her to speak.

Life was so much easier as the Blue Spirit. Things were clear in battle; his steel and his will alone against the world, no worries about the cost of sacrificing green troops he'd never met on the alter of military calculation. Getting 'requisitioned' supplies back to desperate colonists, hunting the bounties on evil men, tracking down rare medicinal plants for healers... it was a cleaner, easier life.

But however much he tries, he can't stop thinking of himself by the name of Zuko. It's painless to think that his father forever branded him a banished prince and nothing more, but his scar didn't make him linger outside Mai's bedroom last night. It doesn't drive him to wonder now, looking across the table, what cutting thing Mai will say next or what her hair looks like hanging plain against her bare back.

Father isn't the one who makes him want to be a prince again.

"No," he agrees. "We're not kids, Mai."

"Are you trying to make me run away with you?"

His heart catches. He hasn't thought that, hasn't even considered it. "Would you... want to?"

"I don't really see the point." She shrugs, mask back in place. More than her curves, her newfound poise, the mask makes her as noblewoman. Mai was always quiet and internal, but this lady - and she _is_ a lady - sitting opposite him is doing more than putting up the natural defenses of the introvert. She can put on with flesh what he needs blue-painted wood to accomplish. He's not sure if that's a good thing or not. He least he knows that when he takes his mask off it's off. "Grand gestures are fine when you're a kid and don't know any better, but we're both old enough to know they never change anything."

His fingers curl into fists. "Deciding what you want in life isn't pointless."

"When did you ever decide anything?" The question strikes him like a slap. She exhales. It isn't quite a sigh. "Your father banished you. If it'd been entirely your choice, you'd still be the Crown Prince right now, probably eagerly serving your first tour of duty in the military that's slaughtering the Earth Kingdom towns you've sheltered in." Mai looks him dead in the eye. "You wouldn't be enjoying the same night life if you'd never gone to that war meeting."

He springs to his feet, knocking his chair to the ground. "Oh yeah? Well at least I don't nod along at whatever other people tell me! Maybe not everything in my life is what I wanted, but I made my own choices with the options I had left!"

The tea shop goes totally quiet.

Zuko looks around. The mix of local patrons stare in shock at him. His back flushes. The alarm in his head, finely tuned after his harrowing early period as a more incompetent Blue Spirit, blares like a riot.

Mai bows her head, hiding her eyes underneath long black bangs. She murmurs, "Good thing they're paying attention to that bruise."

There's only one thing he can do, his cover all but blown.

Zuko turns and stalks out of the shop, the perfect image of the irate boyfriend.

* * *

...

* * *

Qiang, body hugging the table, rolls a pai-sho tile on his knuckles. It's a surprisingly dexterous move coming from him. "Have you enjoyed yourself in our humble colony?"

"Of course," she says, keeping to script. "Your father has been most generous in his hospitality to us."

"I'm glad." Qiang pauses, visibly searching for conversational material. It's late at night, just the two of them alone in the mansion's library, but the niceties must be observed. It is one tradition Mai wishes the colonies hadn't continued. They're such a waste of time, and always play out the same way. "Soooo... do you think you'll be visiting again anytime soon, maybe?"

"No." It's the wrong time to feel tired, but Mai does. "I'm not coming back here."

"Oh."

_Great job, Mai. Insult your host. Father will love that. So will Mother when she hears about it. _"It's not you," she quickly adds. "It's... I have... had this friend. We grew up together, back in the capital, but... she being an acrobat was her destiny. She ran away a few months ago to join a circus, but before she left she said I should go with her." By way of explanation, she threw in, "I'm good with knives."

Qiang blinks slowly. "That," he says, "must have been hard for you. You don't seem the type to win over many friends."

She glares at him. He has the good sense to blush in embarrassment.

"Let me rephrase that so I sound less like an ass," Qiang says, dropping his dancing pai-sho tile to the tabletop. "It must be hard for you to be reminded by this country that your good friend ran off to join the circus here. Especially... when you wanted to go with her? Am I wrong?"

"Running away isn't romantic." Honestly, is she the only person in her generation with any sense? "I can think of better things to do with my time than pitching manure and entertaining squealing brats."

He sits back in his seat, resting clasped hands on his belly. After a moment, he says, "A very wise man once told me that the White Lotus is the most important tile in the game, but I think that's short-sighted. Any piece can win or lose you the game. It's just how you apply what you have."

_Unless the game is fixed before you start playing._ "Do I get cookie to go with that unwanted advice?"

Qiang's cheeks redden. He stands abruptly, jostling the table and unfinished pai-sho game. "No. I think we're done here." Sketching a curt bow, he adds, "Goodnight, Lady Mai."

* * *

...

* * *

Mai pauses in the doorway of her guest bedroom, the hairs on the back of her neck prickling. Since Azula isn't around to be showy about her newly acquired lightning-bending skills, she chalks it up to being watched. While she can't see where he's hiding, she does appreciate that getting the drop on him twice has likely instilled a certain respect for her. While relying on people to overestimate you can carry some danger, Mai will let that slide this once.

"Stop fooling around, Zuko." The Blue Spirit drops down from the ceiling, landing right in front of her. Mai cocks an eyebrow. "Taking lessons from Ty Lee?"

The eyes behind the mask roll. "If I had, the whole world would know I was alive."

"True." She leaves the door open a crack. No need to lock it. He won't be staying around for long and no one's around to overhear them. "Steal anything nice lately?"

He pulls open his shirt a little to show off a scroll stuffed inside. "But that's just business. I came back for my heart rock."

"_Your_ rock?"

"It was a gift!"

"Which you gave back to me this morning, remember?"

Affronted, he replies, "Well, maybe I want something to remember how _cold and unfeeling_ you are. A lump of stone would be perfect."

"Whatever." She stalks over to her nightstand and jerks the topmost drawer open. She pulls out the lava rock and then slaps it into his waiting palm. "Have a fantastic life Zuko, for however little time you have left."

"W-what does that mean?" He pulls off his mask, revealing a one-eyed bewilderment. "You're going to tell people I'm alive?"

"No!" What kind of person did he think she was? "I'm trying to be realistic for you, because you don't seem to be. Sozin's Comet is only a year away. When the war's over, the Fire Nation isn't going to overlook petty criminals anymore."

Time and again over these past weeks, Mai has heard the phrase _put our house to order_ spill from the lips of colonial officials with the practiced ease of a sage's recitation of funeral rites.

"I'll survive," he says with straight-faced confidence. Zuko puts his Blue Spirit back on, its frozen grin at odds with his seriousness. "And while you're playing lackey to Azula, I'll be following my own destiny."

Mai covers her face with her hands so she won't be blinded by such a glaring example of stupidity. "You really _haven't_ changed. You're still the kind of moron who doesn't realize you clip a rose's thorns before picking it with your bare hands."

"No, you shouldn't," he says. "If you clip the thorns, it's not a rose anymore."

Mai lowers her hands. "...What?"

"I said-"

And that's when there's a knock on the ajar door.

* * *

...

* * *

"Lady Mai?" Zuko turns around as a heavy-set teen creeps into the bedroom. The boy's eyes are shaded under one hand, face cast downwards to preserve any dignity he might be infringing on. Zuko stuffs the lava rock into his breast pocket and reaches for his dao. Mai stills him with a touch.

"I want to apologize for abusing your familiarity before." The interloper peeks through his fingers. "Your door was open and... and... _the B-Blue Spirit?_ GUAAAARDS! G-!"

Before Zuko can spring forward, the teen's shouting ends as five knives catch him around his clothes and pin him to the open door. The immobilized teen pales; too startled to shut his soundless, flapping lips.

Zuko, equally shocked himself, turns to Mai.

"Why not?" She shrugs. "All the cool kids are doing it."

"But you said-"

"I know."

The knifed teen squeaks, "Guards?"

"We should go," Zuko says. He pauses, uncertain. "It is 'we', right?"

Mai smiles faintly. "Let's see where you and I find ourselves."

* * *

...

* * *

A trio of guards stops her in the hallway. She points for them, quickly explaining, "It's terrible! He attacked Qiang and now he's headed towards the governor's study!"

"Don't worry, Lady Mai," says the captain of the guards. "You're safe now."

It's only when they're gone off hunting their prey that she muses to herself, "I hope not. That'd be boring."

"Mai?"

She turns. Halfway down this level of the staircase, her father stands with an apprehensive expression.

"Are you all right?" he asks. "There's an intruder-"

"I'm fine." She pulls back one sleeve to reveal the stiletto launcher and extra knife belts she's strapped to herself. Surplus goodies for the road, now that she won't be able to replace her arms so easily. "I can take care of myself."

"...I know." He sheepishly rubs the back of his head. "But a father worries."

Mai almost flinches from an unexpected spike of guilt, but her parents have trained her well. "I'm going to find a quiet corner to read in while these idiots sort themselves out. Don't wait up for me."

His voice chases after her as she glides past him. "Goodnight, Mai."

"Goodnight, Father."

* * *

...

* * *

**Epilogue**

_**(One month later.)**_

_._

Iroh is glad to see the back of Tidao Naval Station, home base of the Southern Fleet, now that his ship's resupply is finished. The former airbender lands were a stark sight, rendered all-but-inhospitable after a century of industrial exploitation. Worse yet was having to dine with Commander Zhao and his captains every night, if only to keep an ear to the navy's current affairs.

"Sir," says Lt. Jee, saluting as Iroh steps onto the bridge. "The last dozen barrels of your tea leaves are being loaded aboard. We'll be ready to sail shortly."

"Very good."

Jee hands him a slip of paper. "Also, a letter arrived for you this morning. It's from a Captain Mushi."

Iroh frowns, wracking his brain for a face to put with that name. He fails. "Let me see."

Breaking the wax seal, he reads the letter. It is short, unsigned, and to the point:

* * *

_General Iroh,_

_The jerk found himself all right. I agree with the assessment._

* * *

"S-Sir?" asks Lt. Jee, frozen in the bear hug Iroh has scooped him up in. Jee's bewilderment only increases when Iroh pulls back to reveal a tear-streaked face. "Are you feeling well, general?"

"Well? I'm GREAT!" Iroh grins. "Grab your pipa and crack open one of those tea barrels, Jee! We're throwing a party!

* * *

...

* * *

_(Several hundred miles away, in the Earth Kingdom...)_

Zuko inwardly cringes at the expression on Mai's face when Song's Mother sets a plate down in front of her. His friend-who-is-a-girl ("And don't get any other ideas, Mr. Blue Spirit.") has dropped several pounds since she joined him on the road, mostly from a reluctance to sample Earth Kingdom peasant cuisine.

He can tell from the twinge in her lip that all she's seeing is the grease and soggy vegetables, not the love and care put into it by their hosts. Her upbringing helps her at least pick at her meal enough to ward off people noticing her dislike, even if every swallow is pained.

It's only when Song is discussing the treatment of patients with her mother that Mai's look of disgust morphs to one of interest. "Acupuncture? Could you teach me?"

Zuko is dubious. "_You're_ interested in medicine?"

"I am when it involves tiny knives."

Song says helpfully, "We call them needles."

He groans. "Don't give her any ideas."

Mai leans forward. "Tell me more..."


End file.
